This is the first news post in a while, but I couldn’t help saying something about it. When someone rights the history of the social internet, the events of last week and this week will almost certainly be mentioned. I just couldn't help getting in on the action. I also have an opinion or two. There are a few paragraphs of backstory that I include for those who aren’t all that familiar with the situation, and then after that comes the current stuff. I’ll bold the first word of the current stuff for those that want to skip the backstory.

First, the backstory. Facebook started in 2004 as an online college directory. It started with just a few schools, and gradually spread across to most major 4-year Universities in the US and abroad, and quite a few 2-year universities as well. Originally, the only way to get an account was to provide a valid school e-mail address from a participating school. I joined the site not long after this, early in the summer of 2005. The website over the course of the past year especially has made some pretty major changes, adding and adding to the site (note that I don’t say improving) without cease. There was always a sense of discontent that was vaguely palpable, in discussion among those who had been on facebook for a while. The first change, that none of us protested (or, really, had a reason to protest) was a change in the formatting of a feature called “The Wall,” which at the outset of the site was basically just a blank, editable section of one’s profie where a user’s friends could make changes and ask questions to the user. This was changed to the form of individually boxed comments, mirroring what has always been a feature of the e-demon myspace (I will not link because I will not, even in a minor way, do anything positive for this website), the (negative) comparisons to which are flowing constantly now. We didn’t see it then, but this was the beginning of myspacebook.com.

The addition of a photo option lead to some complaints across campuses, mostly local and out of reach of the ears of the admins of the website. Most of us let it go quietly without a fight, and it’s now pretty much a staple of people’s profiles. The feature was much better handled than its myspace rival (and still is), allowing for proper photo albums with unlimited numbers of photos, as opposed to myspace’s limits on number and sorting of photos. We took it, because it was useful and could still technically be used towards the directory-based ends of facebook, but it was the start of the push towards a social networking site.

The first signs of protest on facebook came with the addition of the status feature, a good half year after the addition of photos. It was my first attempt at changing facebook from within, and most other people’s as well. Facebook added a feature wherein the user could state what they were up to at the moment - essentially, an area of the profile would read “(insert name here) is” and the following text would be editable by the user. This feature could be very useful, but it was clear from the default options they gave us (along with “at work,” “in class,” “at the library,” etc. are “at a party” and “sleeping”) that they meant it to be a social tool (and dangerously close to a stalking aid, as many of the subsequent facebook additions would seem). Within hours, many people I knew (and, I would venture a guess, many people across the site) had their status set as “(insert name here) is wondering why facebook is changing itself” or something similar. This joking protest wasn’t much, and it didn’t change the minds of the admins, nor did the few feedback messages we sent. It went largely unignored, as we expected it to, and now many people just ignore the feature, or they’ve absorbed the feature they way they did with photos.

This next part is where it gets interesting. The next change is something extremely minor, and should never have become what it was. The basic setup of facebook is that friends in your network get their own box, and six of your friends at random from that network appear in a quick link box as well as a link to see them all. Below this is a long list of friends at “other networks,” namely other schools. One day, facebook decided that they would instead make a few links to networks where the user had the most friends, and the rest would be hidden. A few people sent messages to facebook saying we didn’t like it, and voila, it was gone. It came back quietly a few months later, and at no point did the facebook team acknowledge it either as it was taken away or when it came back, but a change had been made.

For a few months after this, nothing happened. And then, on September 5th, facebook introduced the “Facebook Facelift,” a few major changes to the site. The changes included the widely hated “News Feed,” which was basically a list of all changes that had been made by someone you had identified as a friend. This included changes to relationship status, an update on what each person said they were doing that minute, when one person wrote on another person’s wall if they were both friends, and group activity. Along with this was the “Mini-Feed,” a smaller version detailing happenings with one’s own account that was clearly visible on the user’s profile, right in the center. Within the day, groups (user-created groups of members that anyone can join, in most cases) started popping up in protest. People had a wide range of opinions on the change, from the simple “It’s annoying and unnecessary” to “it makes stalking even easier.” Few people came out in support of the new features, but they were drowned out by the huge protests by opponents of the new features. On the night of September 5th, sensing the upheaval, the site’s main administrator and founder Mark Zuckerberg posted his response. Not deterred, and feeling patronized, the opposition swelled. By midway through Sept. 7th, the group “Students Against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)” had reached almost 750,000 memebers. The group’s founder found himself being interviewed by major media, and the group was talked about everywhere on campus. Ironically, the News Feed only added to its popularity, as every time someone joined, their friends would all see that they had joined and would join the group as well. Very early in the morning on September 8th, Zuckerberg posted another response, this one clearly visible to every as soon as they logged in. It was a partial victory, true, but it left things more or less decided, and most users became happy (although the group still has about 730,000 of those members, and many of us are committed to pushing for the full removal of the news feed (for now, users can simply remove their information from appearing on it). This was a huge day for the power of numbers and the power of the people, and as a socialist I picked right up on it, but I was not the only one - one of the co-administrators of SAFNF(OPTF) posted shortly after the victory that this was indicative of our power. I wholeheartedly agree.

A few days ago (as of this posting), rumors began to circulate that facebook would soon open its doors to anyone who wanted to join by making regional networks available. Facebook at first did not state anything about this on its site, but organically groups protesting it began to appear. The two largest (32,000 members and 24,000 members, many of whom admittedly probably overlap) are starting to gain attention from the media, and Facebook finally posted on its front welcome page a note trying to explain its decision. Their argument is that this won’t change the site much for college users, as colleges will remain independent networks and people from other networks won’t have any access to other users’ profiles not in their own network. This may address the concerns of some, but the main reason most of us still have a problem with it is that they’re killing our website for a profit. There has been the attack from supporters of the change (There are a few of them out there) that we are being elitist, but this is simply not the case. We don’ want to join myspace; that’s why we joined facebook instead. Once they become one and the same, we will have no reason to be on facebook anymore. We’re not trying to keep others out - we’re trying to keep Mark Zuckerberg from destroying the directory that he created in the name of profit. The old joke-slogan from The Simpsons (“Sorry, but there’s profit to be had) seems to apply quite well. I don’t want to reject friend requests from 50 strangers who just want to tell me “ur profile pic is hott.” That’s myspace, not facebook, but if facebook gets the 100 million members that myspace has (facebook currently hovers aruond 9 mil.), that’s what will happen. When they push this change through (Facebook has yet to release an official date for the opening), Myspacebook will be complete. This protest has not reached the size of the previous one, and most of us even within it are pretty sure that we will fail (this is not a cosmetic change, the way the facelift was - it’s about profit), but it’s not over. If, after reading this, you want to help, head here and help us out. Thank you. Questions? E-mail me, and I’ll give you even more annoying backstory.

I’ve been meaning to write a new “news” post, and it appears that the Gods whom I don’t believe in have given me a sign. The issue that has been on the lips of nearly everyone with relevant access to my brain has been that of the teaching of evolution v. creationism. Were it simply the Daily Show special, I’d likely ignoring it, seeing as the dorms have awful cable and I can rarely if ever actually see the show. However, two of my professors have brought the issue to a forefront, and a third is promising to do so within a week. Dinobiology, Philosophy, and quite possibly soon Sociology are discussing the theory of Charles Darwin, its implications with regards to Christianity and other religions, and its ultimate validity. I am about to do the same, albeit giving a one-sided view.

I’m not going to link to an article here, although if you can’t find one easily then these strange words known as coherent language which have appeared on the page thus far are probably foreign to you anyway. The point is, in roughly 20 states across the country, angry parents, community members, fundamentalists, and others are attempting to make cases against evolution, and for creationism or “intelligent design,” which is creationism without specifically mentioning God or the stories of the Bible, just some kind of intervention which may or may not be any one God. If there’s anything less believeable than creationism in the face of fact, it’s creationism minus God. Tangent over. Anyway, they argue that Darwin’s theories were wrong, Godless, and more than anything depressing.

Advocates of creationism are quick to point out that evolution is a theory, not a fact. This, I will concede. Nobody knows 100% that apes and humans share an ancestor. It may be simple coincidence that we share 98.5% of our DNA. We can’t just go assuming that theories like evolution are true. Next thing you know, they’ll be teaching things like gravity in physics. It’s a pretty slippery slope.

Am I saying that I know for sure that God didn’t create the world in 7 days? No, because I wasn’t there. However, I do know for a fact that he didn’t create it 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. I know this because the earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old, dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago, etc. I suppose at some level it’s possible to theorize that God created Earth 6 to 10 thousand years ago and made it so carbon-dating would show it to be billions of years old, “just to fuck with us,” but somehow I don’t buy it.

Then what does it all mean? Why are we here? What is the human purpose? My question here than answers or at least puts aside these creationists’ claims is what makes you so sure there is one? I know you’d love to believe that there is an ultimate reason behind human existence, and that we were meant for something more than breathing, reproducing, and dying. Afterall, what makes more sense than a divine presence who creates an imperfect set of species, watches them kill each other, gives them fatal diseases and horrific medical anomalies, then sits back expecting praise? That’s a reason, right? I know that evolution provides for none of these things, or for that matter anything but how we got to be here. But the scary answer is, maybe there’s no reason other than that we are. Wanting to believe that something has a reason doesn't give it a reason. This isn’t proof or disproof, it’s desperation.

The final claim of creationists is somewhat of a last-straw. They claim that the fossil record is not definitive, and does not prove evolution. There is no word for this other than denial. I’m a freshman in college and I know how definitive the fossil record is. The only way to even hint at its indecisiveness is to play with semantics, to twist words until they mean nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing this too, but not when it interferes with scientific fact.

Evolution is not without its flaws, and there are some things about it that will likely be proven wrong. I am not opposed to an open-minded view of evolution, because better understanding comes from critical analysis. But it’s no better to go into something knowing you’re not going to believe it than it is going in unquestioning. Evolution is a better theory than creationism partly because it’s disprovable in theory; there is a set of conditions that would technically disprove evolution. If new evidence was discovered that the genetic coincidence between humans and apes is meaningless, or that we didn’t all come from the sea, evolution goes out the window. However, there does not seem to be any more circumstance under which a creationist would give up creationist theory than the man I can hear outside in People’s Park will believe that the Martians are not controlling his brain. I could explain evolution to both of these people, and neither one would under any circumstances believe that their theory was damaged in any way. Nothing I could say to them would convince them of this, and therefore it is not a theory but a psychological obsession which abandons logic for unquestioning acceptance. It is no easier to prove a psychological obsession than to disprove it.

The long and short of it, which you may or may not have grasped by now, is that I am a firm believer in evolution over creationism. Creationism isn’t scientific, can’t be proven or disproven, and has no evidence to support it other than the Bible, known for the amount of times it contradicts itself. Whether or not this debate will resolve itself, whether or not any progress has been made since the Scopes Monkey Trial, we have yet to see. However, I am afraid of a country where children are taught psychological, religious obsession in school rather than scientific theory with strong evidence. If you believe in creationism, that’s fine, but view it as objectively as you wish to view evolution, please.

I’m not quite sure where to begin with this one. I opened this article, one of many that pollute my junk-mail folder because I made the mistake of signing up for e-mail alerts. This one in particular caught my attention, however, because it was apparently about the filibuster dilemma, something I’d been meaning to write something on. I found it soon, however, to be about much more than that; it is not an article about the filibuster; it’s not really about anything but one conservative judge and a number of things I am fundamentally opposed to.

My opposition begins with the first few paragraphs. Reading the article, one quote in particular stands out: “A lot of judges get to the point they think they were anointed and not appointed.” I was about to agree, as it stated one of my fundamental oppositions to the undemocratic nature of the United States Supreme Court, until I found out that this statement was made by someone in favor of her appointment. How can one who feels that a judge was chosen by God is the perfect selection for one of the most powerful seats in the United States government? Even a person of faith must realize that this presents a serious threat to freedom. And we haven’t even gotten into her record yet.

She is an opponent of the New Deal. The New Deal, which played a key role in saving our country from the full wrath of the Great Depression. The New Deal, the founding of all welfare and one of the most defining governmental acts of the 20th century. Not only is it a question of economic security that she attacks, but of fairness, safety, and the basics of our economic lives. At a time when Social Security is already under attack, the last thing this country needs is a Supreme Court Justice who feels it should never have been created.

She has also attacked much legislation which even uses as minor justification for its actions race. This includes, but is not limited to affirmative action (something I am not in favor of, but not by any means because it is “entitlement based on group representation,” merely because it is a backwards solution). More boggling than perhaps anything else, she wrote a 40-page opinion which said People should be treated equally, regardless of race. No shit? Ask any American elementary school student, they can write a paper that says the same thing. It’ll probably fit on one page. What she’s doing using a State Supreme Court position to make this statement that nobody with a major influence on American Government, I’m not sure. I hope for more in a Supreme Court Justice than American rhetoric 101.

The article concludes (if it can be called that, for there is absolutely no sense of connectivity and flow here) with her opinions on faith in America. Debate all you want the meaning and the reach of the First Amendment, but I’m relatively sure that a Justice making rulings against philosophers and scientists who act “as if God did not exist,” a reference to a very clearly defined God, would not stand. I don’t require a wall of separation of church and state, but when we get to the point when our Government bans science, progress, and much of western thought because it disagrees with her personal faiths.

I’m upset now, not just because of this judge but because the shitty article in which I found her was disjointed, forcing my response to be the same. Thank god for the filibuster, now fire that CNN editor.

SPACE WEAPONS?

It would appear that Reagan’s legacy lives on, in the form of his infamous Strategic Defense Initiative. Much as I’d love to believe that the reason for this fervor is the final Star Wars film, I’m instead of the opinion that this is yet another ploy by our fearless leader to make war easier and more accessible to the masses.

Much to my friends’ chagrin, I haven’t ever been much of a NASA supporter. Science and progress are, of course, the mark of civilization and a logical place for us as a society to go, of course, once we fix the problems down here. My problem is, however, that we have so many currently existing problems right here at home that starting them in space seems, for lack of a better word, to be bullshit. In the middle of the largest deficit our country has seen, we have neither the funds nor the political energy to embark on new and ambitious explorations into the final frontier.

I’ve never been a huge fan of arms races, and I’ve never been a huge fan of space programs especially during times of financial crisis, and so you the humble reader are probably not surprised to hear that I’m not a big supporter of an arms race in space. What gets me about this article then, in particular, is a certain quote by a certain military official at the end of it: “The focus of the process is not putting weapons in space.” Then just what the hell is it? To launch weapons of some kind off of the surface of our planet, and to have them orbiting the planet in such a way as to be useful both on and off the planet. How, precisely, is that not weapons in space?

In short, this is not a science or technological or even a political issue; it’s just stupid and those who would consider spending billions of U.S. dollars beginning an interstellar Cold War are the same.